This is a test post, from the WordPress.com desktop app. No promises that starting to use a desktop app will be the magic solution to me remembering to update my blog on the regular. Having the app on my phone never did, after all.

I bought a MacBook Pro, which I like quite a bit so far. Of course I’ve only had it for a couple of days, so the shine hasn’t worn off yet. But I’ve been a Linux user for quite a while, so I’m already familiar with UNIX-like systems. And it’s nice to not have to worry about, say, having to spend an afternoon fussing over my wireless drivers after an update. Or my battery life being utter garbage. Anyway, I expect I’m going to like this just fine.

I chose to get one of the MacBooks with a French keyboard, for the odd time that I need/want to write in French. I like having the accented characters handy, but it’s going to take some retraining to avoid just hitting è everytime I want to use an apostrophe.

Peut-être je vais écrire içi en francais aussi, parfois.

Anyway, a really quick update on how we’re doing:

Cohen is going into grade 1 now. He’s super into Pokémon now. We’re playing the TCG together sometimes.

The whole family is playing Pokémon Go, although Cohen only plays with us, not on his own yet. He doesn’t have his own phone, aside from using my old Galaxy S2X to play a few games. It won’t run Pokémon Go.

KJ and I are getting more serious about tackling our debt. We, uh, we didn’t decide that we were going to do that until after I bought the Mac, for the record.

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I’m no longer holding myself to the five posts a week rule here, for two reasons:

I’m not enjoying it all that much, and I’m slipping into posts of little consequence too often.

I’m starting another project, but it’s super secret for now, which means that my attention will largely be elsewhere, and that I won’t be able to talk about what I would want to talk about. More on that when it’s not super secret.

I’ll keep doing the weekly wrap-up posts, and Throwback Thursdays. I’ll still try to post stuff about D&D, etc., but I won’t hold myself to a number of posts per week.

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The only comments that I receive are spam anyway, so I’m just going to turn comments off entirely. I’m not closing them for the posts that still have comments open, because they’re set to close after a few days anyway. From this point out, they should never even open on new posts/pages.

I kind of expected any discussion to come up when I share posts to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr anyway, and that there would seldom be any real discussion here. Anyway, turning them off here means I don’t have to sink any time into clearing out the spam filter, so it’s one less thing I can use to distract myself from writing, etc.

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What with the new project starting tomorrow, I’m due to provide answers for the questions that remain open here.

This project doesn’t have a title, and there’s no particular hashtag that I’m going to use when sharing elsewhere.

Comments will remain open on posts for a few days after the post has been published.

I’m going to decide on sharing posts as I post them, at first. So, when I think something is worth sharing elsewhere, I’ll do it. I’ll reevaluate this approach after the first month or two, when I get a better feel for what people are looking at and how that relates to where content is shared.

I’ll host all text entries here. Videos will go on YouTube or Vine, depending on how long they are. I’ll do my throwback Thursday posts here and on Tumblr along with any memes. Other images will probably just be posted here.

Not an answer to a direct question here, but something else I’m going to include in the project is to develop a D&D campaign setting. I’ve done a bit of this in the past, and I’d like to get into more of it, even if I don’t have time to run my own game. So you can expect maps, dungeons, stat blocks for creatures, etc. I’ll be doing all of this with 5th edition in mind, because that’s what I’m currently playing, and because I like it a lot.

When I fail to meet my goals, I’ll do a quick survey on Facebook to determine the consequences.

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I’m going to do a bit of thinking out loud here, because it kind of fits the spirit of the new project, and because it helps me build the habit of posting here more often.

I don’t have a title for the project. I think I should come up with something that’s descriptive, but also short enough to use as a hashtag. #dailyhaiku was pretty obvious for the daily haiku project, but so far nothing has jumped out at me for this one. Of course it might make more sense, when I’m sharing posts elsewhere, to use some hashtag(s) more specific to the content that I’m sharing, rather than a general one for the project.

I haven’t decided what to share elsewhere. Do I share everything, which could be overkill, or do I just share, say, the first instance of something and then the final version?

What do I do about comments? Right now I have comments set to closer on posts after a few days. It keeps the spam down. Do I want to keep it that way? I kind of expect most chatter will take place on Twitter or Facebook anyway.

What do I host here, and what do I publish elsewhere but embed here? Like, I’m going to host any videos I do on YouTube, but do I want to host still pictures on Instagram or something?

What do I do when I don’t meet my goals for any given week? This has been a non-issue with the daily haiku thing, because I only missed one day. Embarrassing stunt? Charitable donation? Some combination of the two?

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2014 was the year I decided to take on a writing project in public. I’ve been writing a haiku a day all year, and posting them on Twitter and Facebook. The idea behind this project was simple enough. I wanted to write something every day, and doing it in public kept me honest about that. If I missed a day (and so far, I’ve only missed one) it would be obvious to anyone who was paying attention.

I didn’t expect there would be all that many people paying attention, but the daily haiku project has been received well enough, judging from the likes/favourites/retweets/comments. I’m going to publish the results in an ebook early next year. I’m keeping the date vague, because I haven’t decided if what needs to go in the book other than the haiku themselves. Some of the haiku were originally published with pictures, hashtags, etc. that I’ll want to include. I may include commentary for some of them.

I’m also done with haiku. I hope any time I’m tempted to write one after this year, that I write a limerick or a sonnet or something else instead.

I definitely want another writing project, and I want it to be public again. This is what I’ve come up with:

I need to produce something at least 5 days a week. It may not be the same days days each week.

I’m allowing myself to replace the writing for 2 of those days each week with another creative endeavour, like a drawing or a video.

In addition to this (not a replacement for writing), I’ll do a “throwback Thursday” post every week. However, instead of an throwback picture to, say, my childhood, I’ll be posting a picture of myself every Thursday that was taken the previous Thursday.

I’m allowing myself to write fiction, non-fiction and poetry here. I will post incomplete drafts as I produce them. I will, some days, just revise these drafts and post that instead of a new piece of writing.

The non-writing creative endeavours can also be a work in progress when I post them.

I’ll sometimes just do a stream-of-consciousness post, but I only get credit for those once a week. That is, I can post those as often as I like, but I won’t count more then 1 toward my 5 writings per week goal.

I might do themes? I ran this idea by my friend Corenski, and it was something that he suggested. I expect I’m going to do some of these, but I’m not sure yet if I want to schedule themes, or if I just want to let them occur organically.

I don’t have a definite end goal in mind for this. Also, you could probably argue convincingly that this isn’t really a project, is it? I’m tempted to say that it’s going to go until I produce another book of some sort, and that it has to be a coherent book like a short story collection, not just a collection of unrelated posts that I think were interesting. But I’m going to leave the end undefined until I get a sense of where things are really going.

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I’m going to be cleaning up around here over the course of this month. I’ve got a project in mind for this site, which I think is long overdue. As I’m getting ready for that, I’ll be recategorizing some of the posts, and maybe just removing others. I’m not decided on removing anything yet.